Day 153 – Good Courses to Take

This week I attended 2 of 3 workshops offered ProLango.  Paul Anderson, a Seattle Times columnist, one of two that writes the HireGround, does the presentation and is one of the principles of ProLango.   These free workshops are offered twice per month and are a feeder for the more advanced workshops that he charges for.
The three workshops are:

• Career Search Optimization: Today's Job Market Demystified
• Resume Search Optimization: Get Noticed!
• Advanced Interviewing: Secrets Behind Decision Making

Career Search Optimization is the one that I missed. 
Resume Search optimization deals with how companies process the 900+ applications they receive for each position advertised and how to get noticed in this crowd.  Little things like handing your resume to someone and having them read it for 7 seconds.  How far do they get.  This is an average amount of time a HR representative spends reading your resume.  Does this leave the person with the impression that you intended?  Does it convey the information need in order to insure that you move on to the next step in the getting the interview?
He talked about rewriting your resume for each and every job application.  First for the computer matching the key words found in the job requisition.  Second, for the HR person. And third, the most important the reading by the hiring manager. 
Of course, what you really want to be aiming at is circumventing this process by getting to the hiring manager first.  This is where the networking aspect comes in.
This workshop has me reevaluating my processes.  I have gotten away from doing the deep text analysis that I was doing early on, now I have started doing this again.  I have become more aggressive in rewriting my resume to fit the job.  And this has reinvigorated my actions.
The advance interviewing process touched on the normal things like getting prepared through research and dressing right though the biggest part of the message had to do more with the psychological parts of the interview like building rapport and behavior types.
Mirroring is a great  technique for quickly building rapport with others.   Paul indicated that paying attention to the style of person you are dealing with:

1. Visual – rapid speech and breathing, looks up.  Uses visual words like “I see what you mean.
2. Verbal – slower speech and breathing.  looks more straight out.  Uses verbal words like “I hear that”
3. Kinesthetic- Slow talker  and slowest breathing as they translate feelings/emotions into words.  Tends to look down.  Uses feeling words:  “I feel your pain.”

One way to mirror is to change your style to match the style of the interviewer.  What we didn’t get into, which Paul said is covered for an 1/2 hour in the advance classes is how to do this with an interview panel.
The next level of mirroring is where you copy the movements of the interviewer as best you can without appearing sarcastic.  These are techniques that Tony Robins talks about in his works like the book “Unlimited Power.”
I felt the two workshops that I attended were great and highly recommend that people go to these.  They have been working on my thinking and my approach all week.  I will have to struggle with whether to take the advance courses.  They are reasonably priced at $400 for 3 courses at 4 hour, but $400  is something that has to be deeply considered now.
My first step will be to attend the one that I missed, career search optimization.  Others that I talked to indicated that it was really good also.  Then I will try to implement as much as I can myself and then see the results I get.  Then I will consider whether it is worth it to spend the money.

True clarity can come only when someone is willing to notice: There is something I do not know, the knowing of which could change everything.
-- Werner Erhard